Daily Tech Bits

Blogging Tools

If you’re less effective than you could be as a blogger, maybe you need some new tools to streamline your processes and leave room for the blogging mojo to flow. A good place to start is with Lifehacker’s list of top ten tools to get blogging done.

Lots of these are Firefox add ons, though there are some stand alone ones as well. My favorite, thought it’s at the bottom of Lifehacker’s list is Autocopy, a Firefox extension that automatically copies highlighted text to the clip board. Check out the full list.

Weeding Out The Scrapers

If you’ve had your own blog for a while, then you’ve probably come across the scrapers. These are the people who steal your content (in whole or in part) without even the courtesy of acknowledging the source.  They put your content on their blogs so they can make money with Adsense or their advertising of choice. Meanwhile, there’s not much you can do about it. Or is there?

Actually, there is, and this rant from my friend Jen on the Domestik Goddess blog tells you how. If this seems a strange place to find this info, rest assured that Jen harbors a not so secret geek inside her and knows what she’s talking about. Here’s how she sees the situation, using the analogy of an artist going into a gallery:

One day, you waltz yourself into a brand-new gallery with a brand-new original collage under your arm, full of optimism, chin held high. You’re sure that today’s the day you’ll break through into the big-time art world… but shock! The gallery walls are already covered, top to bottom, with perfect copies of your original work!

Needless to say, you don’t have to take this lying down.  Jen shows you how to fight back in Pond Scum Scrapers: No More Ms Nice Blogger.

WordPress.com Adds New RSS Functionality

WordPress.com, one of the most popular free blog platforms, recently announced upgrades to their RSS functionality. The new features include a number of widgets that provide functionality that previously could only be implemented by using a third party service like Feedburner.

The new widgets can be found on your “Reading Options” page and allow you to include comment counts, categories, tags, and gives your readers the ability to submit your posts to Del.icio.us, Digg, and StumbleUpon.

This is how it looks in your RSS feed:

The new widgets can be found on your “Reading Options” page.

This will be a welcomed addition for those of you out there who don’t want Google to know exactly how many subscribers you have.